The rise of the Internet and Content Marketing

Unless you have been living under a rock, you will have noticed over the past five or 10 years or so, a remarkable shift in the way we search for and receive our information.

The rise of the Internet has changed everything – but I don’t think many people realise just how much.

In the past 50 or 60 years the primary sources of information about the world we lived in were largely limited to books, newspapers, early magazines, billboards, radio and later, television.

These were the only really effective mediums for a company wanting to leverage its business and get their message across. Of course, the advent of the Internet changed everything!

The Web has opened up so many avenues of opportunity for businesses to market their products and services that it is almost mind boggling.

It has also left traditional media companies who previously thrived on the ‘rivers of gold’ running through their newspapers and magazines, to have a total rethink of their operations.

Nowadays, the mantra for anyone wanting to stay in business – and this applies to almost any area – is ‘publish or perish’ – and I don’t mean publishing through the printed medium.

I mean the use of digital content (content published on the Internet)  – something that has completely changed the goalposts about how business is done.

With the rise of digital and social media – especially Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and others – we can now communicate (and get most of our information) in a way almost inconceivable little more than 10 years ago.

I don’t think there has been a bigger change (or paradigm shift) in lifestyle or communications since the invention of the Gutenberg Printing Press in Germany in the 1400s, or the onset of the Industrial Revolution in England in the late 1800s.

That the change has happened so quickly and in such a pervasive and all-enveloping way, is testimony to the skill and foresight of the people at the ‘coalface’ of Internet and computer development – leaders like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and many others.

And this foresight has created opportunities – opportunities for a brave new world of marketing and selling techniques based on the click of a mouse rather than browsing a newspaper or watching TV.

The Internet is by definition, an unlimited and all-encompassing medium – offering businesses and clients’ alike, almost unlimited marketing and buying options.

So corporate marketing today is very different from what it was a mere 10 years ago.

The use of blog and video posts, infographics, YouTube webinars, research papers, white papers, case studies, e-newsletters and magazines and Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn/Instagram/Google+  posts, is the way of the future.

The old ways may have worked 10 years ago but no longer is a business able to rely solely on traditional media to increase its sales.

New media has taken over whether we like it or not, and unlike the Luddites of medieval England, we do not have the option of destroying the tools of the trade.

Apple Computers is the world’s biggest-selling and most valuable business and made more than US$234bn in 2015.

Apple recently reported profits of more than $11 billion for the quarter that ended in September 2015 on revenue of $51.5 billion.

That’s more than the combined profits of Google ($4.7 billion) and Microsoft ($5.8 billion) — two companies that are, by any normal standard, huge engines of profit. I myself own three Apple products – an iPhone, iPad and MacBook Air – as do many of the people I know and work with.

And therein lies one of the biggest problems when buying on the Internet – how to decide what you want when the choice is so great.

In an online market so replete with variety of product, just deciding what you want can be the biggest headache.

Friends, it is too late to be a Luddite – my advice is embrace the technology and make it work for you.

Not to do so may sound the death knell for your business.